Gates: Seamless computing is the aim
Published: 20 Nov 2003 12:50 GMT
What's your view of this idea of utility computing? And how does it speak to seamlessness if indeed this is a case of "here they go again," putting their twists and turns to what they want to propagate?
You have to be careful with utility computing. That was a rage during the 1990s, that everything would be hosted and moved outside the company. Where are those hosting companies now? Only a few things -- like running Web sites -- fit those models. The IT systems are your brain. If you take your brain and outsource it then any adaptability you want [becomes] a contract negotiation.
There's something common between the IBM message, the Sun message and the Microsoft message: Some of the things that you do with personnel to operate these systems today should be done automatically with software. We all agree it's a software breakthrough that will let people free up part of their IT budget that now goes toward operations and apply it toward new things. What's interesting is that everyone admits it's a software problem, not a hardware problem.
What's driving this? Is it marketing?
No. It's the development and operational and personnel costs that are really jumping up to be this huge percentage. You have to go after those to free up the most dollars for [IT] to innovate. We're not pro- or anti-outsourcing, but we think people have to be careful because there's certainly been more failures than successes.
Where does Linux fit into the picture?
Linux is what Unix was in the 1970s: a perfectly reasonable operating system. There's a lot being done with it. Of the two operating systems that are gaining share, one is called Linux and one is called Windows. And Linux is wiping up Unix's share while our overall share has continued to grow somewhat. Clearly, at the server level there'll be intense competition where [companies] like IBM put WebSphere on top of Linux. That's very expensive and we just put the app server into Windows. And then people can do the value comparisons.
But with IBM pushing Linux, isn't there customer interest because they can offer a wider solution?
What do you mean by "wider?" Wider in terms of being more expensive? Wider in terms of the number of consultants required? What's wider mean in this case?
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